Some of the best books I ever read are books I discovered on my own, either in a library or a bookstore. In fact, half of the pleasure of reading comes, as far as I am concerned, from the surprise of the discovery, which is why I hate the Internet-based paradigm of “if you liked X, then you may like Y”). Venturing into a bookstore is one of the greatest pleasures of trDezsö Kosztolányi, The Plaster Angel (Noran Libro Kiadó, 2010. Trans. from the Hungarian by Eszter Molnár. Ed. by Peter Doherty)

Some of the best books I ever read are books I discovered on my own, either in a library or a bookstore. In fact, half of the pleasure of reading comes, as far as I am concerned, from the surprise of the discovery, which is why I hate the Internet-based paradigm of “if you liked X, then you may like Y”). Venturing into a bookstore is one of the greatest pleasures of travel for me, even if the books are in languages I don’t read.

This summer I entered a small bookstore in Budapest, and discovered a bilingual edition of Dezsö Kosztolányi’s The Plaster Angel, which includes twenty short stories written as early as 1908. I had read two novels of his published by NYRB, Skylark and Kornél Esti, plus a novella in French, and he already was on my list of great unknown 20th century European writers, so it was with great joy that I grabbed the book off the shelf, and with even greater joy that I took in its French covers and, after a brief inspection, decided that the translation was professionally done.

A few stories about handicapped people—such as the one in which a “poor little invalid” tortures everyone around him with his demands—bring to mind the complex psychology of Stefan Zweig; others, like “The Fat Judge,” “Feri” and “The Swim” have the quiet soulfulness of Chekhov’s stories; others, like “Heart,” in which the demand of a rich widow to have her heart stabbed with a knife after her death, or “Order” about a man who is so obsessed with order that when his wife changes the position of his armchair, he takes the pistol and shoots her, and later, in the ambulance, he is so disturbed by the esthetic asymmetry that he asks the doctor “to sit parallel with him”!—these stories display typical Eastern European dark humor and an absurdist wit reminiscent of Gogol. And then, there are stories with a hint of postmodern wit avant la lettre, such as “The Wondrous Visitation of KH,” in which a young man who wishes to see again his deceased lover has his wish granted, but realizes that they have nothing to tell each other; or “A Robber,” in which a young man who decides to commit his first robbery ends up applying first aid to the woman he had intended to rob: “All in all he was a very untalented robber.” In “The Liars,” a family of creative and imaginative people transforms reality (in which the father is a charming crook) into a magic world reminding us of Steven Millhauser.

I will like to end with a quote from Kosztolányi’s fellow writer, Sándor Márai. Márai, who had enormous admiration for Kosztolányi, had met him in Budapest, and wrote about him and the world they shared and which disappeared after WWII:

“Kosztolányi and his contemporaries still perceived something different under the entry-word “Literature” than do those writing today. For them literature was simultaneously play and ritual, conspiracy and craft, Eleusinian rite and complicitous pact sealed with blood.” (Sándor Márai, Memoir of Hungary 19441948. Trans. by Albert Tezla. Budapest: Corvina Books and Central European University Press, 1996)...more

Kosztolányi was born in Szabadka (Subotica) in 1885, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but which now lies in northern Serbia. The city serves as a model for the fictional town of Sárszeg, in which he set his novella Skylark as well as The Golden Kite. Kosztolányi studied at the University of Budapest, where he met the poets MihDezső Kosztolányi was a famous Hungarian poet and prose-writer.

Kosztolányi was born in Szabadka (Subotica) in 1885, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but which now lies in northern Serbia. The city serves as a model for the fictional town of Sárszeg, in which he set his novella Skylark as well as The Golden Kite. Kosztolányi studied at the University of Budapest, where he met the poets Mihály Babits and Gyula Juhász, and then for a short time in Vienna before quitting and becoming a journalist--a profession he stayed with for the rest of his life. In 1908, he replaces the poet Endre Ady, who had left for Paris, as a reporter for a Budapest daily. In 1910, his first volume of poems The Complaints of a Poor Little Child brought nationwide success and marked the beginning of a prolific period in which he published a book nearly every year. In 1936, he died from cancer of the palate.The literary journal Nyugat (Hungarian for "West"), which played an invaluable role in the revitalization of Hungarian literature, was founded in 1908 and Kosztolányi was an early contributor, part of what is often called the "first Nyugat generation", publishing mainly in poetry.

Starting in the 1920s he wrote novels, short stories, and short prose works, including Nero, the Bloody Poet (to the German edition of which Thomas Mann wrote the introduction), Skylark, The Golden Kite and Anna Édes. In 1924 he published a volume of verse harkening back to his early work, entitled The Complaints of the Sad Man.

Kosztolányi also produced literary translations in Hungarian, such as (from English, at least) Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", "The Winter's Tale", Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", Lord Alfred Douglas' memoirs on Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling's "If—". He was the first authentic translator of Rilke's poetry, and he worked a Hungarian masterpiece after Paul Valéry's "Cimetiere Marin"....more